


A collection of Stories

by Hold_en



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Art, Collections - Freeform, Drabble, Drabbles, F/M, Fanfic, Fanfiction, Forbidden, Romance, SSHG - Freeform, Sad, Short Stories, Sorrow, drips, hpfanfiction, short fiction, snamione, snanger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-02-18 23:02:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22534567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hold_en/pseuds/Hold_en
Summary: A chance to write the short scenes that enter my mind, accompanied by art I love to draw. I hope you enjoy them.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Comments: 30
Kudos: 70





	1. Dying for You

“You know, there was a time that I would have died for you,” he says casually, flipping the newspaper one morning.

“Oh?” She replies equally nonchalant. “When was that?”

She smirks over at him, knowing how this little tradition will go. Each game begins with the same statement and it ends with a comment such as; ‘ _When you stopped Longbottom from blowing up his cauldron for the thousandth time’_ or _'When you first let me taste you’._

Sometimes it’s serious and heartfelt; ' _When you nursed me after the war’ or “When you first said you loved me.’_

They sit across from each other at the breakfast table. His hair, threaded with silver, is highlighted by the sun behind him. Her face is warmed by the light, giving her face an unearthly glow.

Their kitchen is cramped, with books of all subjects littering most surfaces. Neither like to cook, so the stovetop holds the potions article he was reading last week. Beside the kettle is the Arithmancy book she just finished.

She brings the tea cup to the edge of her lower lip and blows gently as she waits for his reply. The steam from her tea spirals around her face.

"Before you married Weasley,” he finally says without raising his eyes from the paper.

The tension is sudden and thick. The amusement is gone from her face and the band on her left finger seems to reflec the sun streaming in through the windows.

“We promised.” Her eyes are wet and sorrowful. “Why… Why say that?”

The newspaper is laid on the table. She looks up to see his soft gaze on her face and it makes the tears come harder.

“Because I can’t do it anymore.” His voice is dark and thick. “Stolen hours aren’t enough.”

“You promised-” she begins.

“I know,” he says, raising a hand to stop her from running. “But circumstances have changed.”

“Circumstances haven’t changed,” she says resentfully. “ _You’ve_ changed.”

“It’s possible.” He shrugs in a way that suggests forced indifference. “But the facts remain the same."

She looks at her hands, now trapped in her lap and stiff. She doesn’t want to cry like this in front of him. She’s never cried in front of him.

“You know I can’t leave him.”

“I do.”

“Yet you want me to choose between you?”

“No,” he says with a soft voice. “There was never any choice to be made. You will always pick him.”

“I chose to come here day after day, year after year,” she says, knowing her trembling voice gives away her increasing desperation.

“And I allowed it,” is his rumbling reply.

She can see that he wants to say more, to explain why. But it changes nothing, she can see it in the determined set of his jaw and the way he holds his mouth. He has made a decision and she has never known him to be anything but stubborn.

She takes one last look around the kitchen she always felt was warm and welcoming. It suddenly seems suffocating.

She stands, surprised to find her legs are shaking. He goes to stand as well but she raises a hand in a silent bid for him not to move.

She allows herself only a moment to memorize his face in this moment. Backlit by the sun, unearthly and beautiful to her. She doesn’t linger on his eyes.

When she is several miles from his home she allows the tears to fall. They soak the front of her blouse.

“There was a time that I would have died for you,” she says.

She says it over and over as she walks, knowing he cannot and will not hear her.


	2. His favorite look

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A darling little story of looks and touches. 
> 
> Previously published on my Tumblr account

She came down the corridor as he was finishing patrols. She had a daydreaming look clearly written upon her face. 

After a year of having her on staff he’d been accustomed to her various looks. Studious included a furrowed brow and nibbling her lower lip. Amused usually meant curled corners of her mouth, accompanied by tinkling laughter and crinkled eyes. Sorrow was large wet gazes and a trembling of her lower lip. 

But daydream?

Daydream was his favorite. Daydream was Professor Granger lost in her own world, swanning down the hallway with a strange half smile and soft eyes. It was a look most often reserved for past students like Luna Lovegood, but Snape was amused to find it suited Hermione just as well. 

_Hermione_.

The name that haunted him as he slept each night. The name of the former student and now employee that had slowly wormed her way past his defenses and into his affections. The name attached to the entrancing (yet oblivious) creature that seemed to have just noticed his approach. 

“Oh , hello Headmaster!”

It was _Headmaster_ in public, and _Severus_ at staff meetings and private talks in her classroom. It was Headmaster during dinners and walking down corridors. But Severus if they ran into each other shopping at Hogsmeade. 

“Professor Granger.”

He inclined his head ever so slightly, coming to stop. Hermione had stopped as well, and Snape couldn’t help but notice they were alone in the corridor. He felt the back of his neck prickle. 

“You seem in good spirits,” he added, pretending to be nonchalant but all the time aware at her proximity. 

“Oh I am!” Hermione gushed, the crinkling at the corner of her eyes nearly skipping his heart to beat. “I was just thinking about the weekend. Hagrid’s promised to show me his latest shipment of billywigs and I’m terribly excited to see them.”

“Mmm,” was the noncommittal reply as he slowly scanned her face. She had a stray tendril, knotted and frizzy, moving about her face as she spoke. He realized it was clinging to her pale lip gloss (cherry? Strawberry?) and she hadn’t noticed. 

She was still talking about billywigs when his hand reached out to her. He hadn’t even realized he had done it. But there it was, snaking between them and pulling the hair from her lips and tucking it behind her ear. At the sensation of her soft lobe Snape snapped from his reverie, stricken. 

He realized then that Hermione had stopped talking.

She was simply staring up at him, her lips slightly parted. A frisson of magic swept between them; electric and impossible to ignore. 

Immediately his hand went to pull back from her, his entire face flushing with embarrassment. But Hermione’s hands were coming, as if in prayer and enveloping his, stopping him from pulling back. He instantly took note of the softness of her skin. 

“I… I don’t….” 

For once in his life, Snape was at a loss of what to say. All he could do was stare at her hands, gently cupped around his own before dragging his gaze to hers.

She was wearing a completely different expression now – one that he hadn’t catalogued. Then she spoke, her voice pitched low and husky. 

“Finally.”

He remained immobile when she launched herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling his mouth to hers with a force that he wouldn’t have expected from her. His own lips slanted against her mouth, tasting her and groaning in slowly unwinding desire as she sighed in delight. 

As his arms wound around her frame, pulling her mouth more fully against his own, Snape had the passing notion that the look Hermione had been wearing only moments before had been lust. 

Lust, he decided, was his most favorite look of all. 


	3. Untouchable

She didn’t think of them every second. 

Often she went blissfully about her day, focused on working alongside her husband in the lab. Those days were bright and joyful and she could postulate theories on why certain items worked better with her current draught than others. 

Those days included copious amounts of lovemaking in all areas of their home. Or reading by the fire with his hand absently stroking her hair. 

But then, during something innocuous like writing at her desk, or in this case, washing in the shower, she would remember and fall apart. Like an inevitable creeping shadow, it always found her eventually. 

She could not outrun it. 

It didn’t matter that it had been over ten years, the pain was still fresh. 

He heard her familiar whimper along with the falling droplets and quickly moved from his chair. She was inside the shower, sobbing softly.

Her normally thick and frizzing hair was damp and plastered to her head. She looked younger than her thirty years as she turned her mournful eyes on him.

Without a word he removed his shirt, letting it fall to the ground. He held out his arms and with an inchoate cry she threw herself into them, relishing in his dry warmth. He pressed a kiss to her dripping forehead and slowly rocked her. 

“I miss them,” she whispered against his neck. “I still can’t forgive myself. I’m scared I never will.”

He murmured reassurances, but that was out of habit. 

He knew this was one spell that magic could not touch. 


End file.
